I Plead the Fifth
by Tobias Charity
Summary: Ben Stone begins to question his actions with Jack McCoy. Warning: Contains Slash!


Title: I Plead the Fifth  
  
Author: Tobias Charity  
  
Rating: PG-13, for some seriously slashy overtones between Jack McCoy and Ben Stone, and a whole lotta language.  
  
Disclaimer: They aren't mine. I'm only borrowing them, and if their owner knew what sort of twisted lives I was causing his characters to lead he'd probably have a cardiac arrest and sue me for all the money I have.  
  
Feedback: I love any kind of feedback, even the "eww, that's disgusting, he would never do that!" kind.  
  
Summary: Ben Stone starts to question his actions of a few nights ago with McCoy.  
  
Author's Notes: This was a challenge for apocrypha. Here are the requirements:  
  
Write a romance between two characters that, in the reality that is LNO, would rather gouge their own eyes out with a sharpened stick then sleep with each other. There also has to be a REASON for this, and no, they can't be drunk.  
  
No Dialogue Allowed  
  
It must involve Ben Stone and Jack McCoy, although not necessarily as the main characters.  
  
Just in case it passed you by the first time, this is SLASH. First timer, sure, and angst, yeah, but it still involves a fairly.ahem.interesting description of when Ben kissed Jack. It's all from Ben's POV, mind you.  
  
XXX  
  
That bastard.  
  
That oily, slippery, charming, beautiful bastard, sliding and oozing his way into every crack and crevice of my mind and shaking my life down to its very foundation.  
  
He knew me better than I knew myself.  
  
That bastard, inviting me out for drinks after the tormenting case, and then...  
  
I don't want to think about the 'and then'. I don't want to think about what happened after the bar, after dinner, and after the movies and more drinks and the best sex I've had in years and--oh shit, what the hell did I do?  
  
Look at me. Choirboy swearing in his own monologue. There's something for your records, Adam.  
  
I snigger quietly to myself as I read over what I just wrote. I hadn't even known that I was capable of sniggering. Arrg...My life has been turned upside down and all because of that bastard.  
  
That bastard.  
  
We're back to square one.  
  
But I didn't write this to curse about him being a bastard. I wrote this to tell why he's a bastard, and why I'm a moron for falling for him.  
  
But maybe--just maybe--I'm not as much of a moron as I think I am.  
  
I landed Jack McCoy in bed, after all. That has to count for something in my favor.  
  
Or not.  
  
Maybe I was drunk. I hope to God I was drunk. I mean, all my life I've been brought up to believe that gays are evil, gays are the devil's advocates, gays are actually women trapped in men's bodies...All sorts of stupid myths that my parents and teachers and pastors encouraged. Even in the Bible it says that gays are bad. Who am I, the good Catholic who never put a toe out of line, to say the Bible is wrong? That is, after all, at least a minor form of blasphemy. But here I was, in an almost-relationship with another man, and if it was not a mutual relationship of the emotions, at least one of the bodies involved.  
  
I say mutual because I'm not sure if McCoy felt the same way during our little fling as I felt. The whole thing might well have been a mistake. Erase the 'might well'. It most certainly was a mistake. I let myself be taken over by my...my feelings for the man, feelings that I must admit I never knew existed.  
  
But when he kissed me...Oh, dear God, when he kissed me, when those black eyes of his that seemed to see into the very deepest depths of your soul, when those eyes met my own icy blue ones, when his lips touched mine and our tongues twined hungrily together and we fumbled at each other's buttons, when all the breath rushed out of my lungs and he moaned my name out loud, and he pinned me up against the arm of the couch, talented fingers sliding over cotton and silk and wool.I keep on remembering that kiss. I can't help it.It's like he burrows his way into your brain and refuses to come out. Does he do that on purpose or is it completely accidental? Does he try to torture people like that, and make it so that he's impossible to get out of your mind?  
  
I remember.I remember when he was younger, when we were all so much younger.he'd walk into a room and the whole place would just stop. Just stop for a few moments and watch him. Everyone was automatically drawn to him, like metal filings to a magnet. Of course, when we were younger he wasn't aware of that, which only added to his charm, but now he plays upon it every time he goes anywhere.  
  
There are certain things that are never meant to be put down on paper. This is one of them.  
  
Damn, too late.  
  
I'm sure there was a reason for why I...slept with him. I'm sure it's a perfectly airtight reason, because knowing me it can't be any other kind.  
  
Although...maybe just this once there were a few chinks in my armor. Maybe I let Jack McCoy slip through my defenses, reach a part of me that certainly no man ever has before...  
  
It's all so complicated. All so damn complicated. Those stupid cases...double jeopardy...grand jury indictments...McCoy, you stupid bastard, dragging me all the way there just to prove that I screwed up on a case! We realize that. I had that etched into my skull by Adam many times, thank-you-very-much.  
  
I should explain. Or plead the fifth. Is it really that incriminating? Yes, I suppose it is.  
  
A trial...doesn't it always start with a trial? No, no...it started about...nine years ago? No, earlier...Lennie Briscoe was working with Mike Logan...Claire Kincaid was my ADA...Claire, you poor girl...  
  
Wake up, Ben, this is no time for reminiscing and mooning over what might have been.  
  
Or what was.  
  
What was...This is what was. A decade or so ago, a man, Theodore Martin, raped and murdered a young woman of the age of twenty five, leaving her to die in a parking lot in the financial district. On the inside of her thigh were scratched the Latin words Facilis descencus Averni, or in English, easy is the descent into Hell. Lennie Briscoe and Mike Logan caught up with the man, and we had everything but a semen/blood sample. Which is why I screwed up. I argued the case from a completely wrong angle and the man got off scot-free. I beat myself up over it, and Adam and Claire didn't exactly help out with the problem either.  
  
Two months ago, another woman was found dead in the very same parking lot in the financial district, with evidence of sexual trauma (I've been hanging around MEs too long...) and the exact same phrase carved into her flesh. A copycat? McCoy didn't seem to think so. He went digging through old records and found out that Theodore Martin had been arrested for the rape and murder of a young woman nearly a decade ago, but he got off. His ADA, some woman named Carmichael that I didn't know that well, drew up an arrest warrant and sent out Briscoe and a detective named Green to arrest the man. He resisted, pleading double jeopardy, but they arrested him anyways. The judge threatened to throw the case out of court before setting bail at 50,000 dollars. Martin went to trial, and McCoy finally plea- bargained with him.  
  
But not before putting me through hell.  
  
McCoy discovered that I had prosecuted the previous case involving our friend Theodore Martin. He accosted me outside of the courthouse one day, and asked if I'd be willing to testify in front of a grand jury that I messed up. I refused; he threatened me with subpoenas and indictments before I finally gave in.  
  
Oy vey.  
  
All of it seemed to float by in a haze...the briefings, the swearing in, and the questioning by the defense counselor. Then McCoy stepped up to the podium. He fired shot after painful shot about the way I had handled the case before. It was torment, plain and simple. I had to resist the urge to cry out an objection because this time I knew that I was on the wrong side of the witness stand.  
  
Then it was over. McCoy muttered that he had nothing further and I was told to step down. McCoy told me to wait outside for him and I did. He apologized (indirectly, of course) for making it appear that I was the bad guy, that I was the incompetent prosecutor, but it was necessary to get what he wanted out of the jury. He offered to go out for drinks and I accepted, which led to dinner and a movie at his place and then.I will not say it. I refuse to say it.  
  
Until that day I had never given much rational thought to Jack McCoy. After all, he was after my time. I guess.nothing. Never mind. Am I talking to a computer screen? Of course I am. I knew McCoy. Oh yes, I knew him. Or perhaps I should say that I knew of him. His reputation preceded him by far I knew that McCoy was a skirt-chasing prosecutor with the mind of a machine that could win the most difficult cases placed before him. I knew that he sometimes gave in to the demands of the body, usually on his ADAs. Not that they were innocents.I knew Sally Bell for a while and the last thing she should've been was a lawyer. As for Claire.I'm getting off track. We'd talked before, McCoy and I, but not about anything worth mentioning. As for what he thought of me.I don't know. I don't know what he thought of me. Maybe he actually did pity me, although the mere thought of Jack McCoy feeling pity is enough to make the most hardened man laugh until he cries.  
  
I was lonely. There's the reason...I was lonely and my rational thoughts were blocked by that one simple emotion. I'd been longing for some intimate contact with another willing person so I latched on to the first one that walked by. Who happened to be male, and who also happened to be Jack McCoy. Just my luck, isn't it? Loneliness. Hah.  
  
Although...it's not a very good reason. I can come up with a better one.  
  
Maybe.  
  
Why does there have to be a reason? I slept with the man, plain and simple.  
  
Simple. Hah. If there's one thing I've learned through all my years of being an attorney it's that nothing is ever as simple or as plain as it seems. Many times I've had my words twisted by a clever defense counselor, making me seem the bad guy. It's not my fault that sometimes I have to play devil's advocate.  
  
Devil's advocate.  
  
Didn't I say earlier that I had been taught that gays were the devil's advocates?  
  
My brain hurts.  
  
Damn you, McCoy. Damn you for reopening that case. Damn you for nailing the guy when I was too incompetent to do even that. Damn you for dragging me to the courthouse to prove a point that we already knew. Damn you for rubbing my face in my shortcomings. Damn you, oh God damn you to hell for being such a beautiful son-of-a-bitch that no one can resist you. Damn you and all your charm and charisma. Damn you for being a human magnet, for automatically drawing people to you when you walk into the room, and damn you for playing on that and on my weaknesses. I should shut up now. I'm incriminating myself. I plead the fifth.  
  
I plead the fifth. 


End file.
